Searing Bond Viable?

i did some independent calculations, and i found that the maximum dps you can squeeze out of a searing bond totem is about 6300 (209% inc burning from searing/passives/inc burning gem, 160% inc damage taken from vunerability + triple shock, and -60 fire res from EE and double curse)

if you combine this with firetraps i think you can melt shit pretty good

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JayKayRQ a écrit :

that sounds amazing... I just started a searing bond build (currently lvl 36) with fire traps (burning damage stacks) and i dont know what everyone hates about the damage? white mobs burn under 1 second blue in less than 2 seconds and tanky rare mobs in about 4
seconds ,and that only with searing bond if i firetrap them too and cast flammability i dont even see their helthbar going down..they just instant rip

Spoiler

Gear that is decent:

Well keep in mind the game is a big joke in normal and to be honest even for most of cruel. You really need to test it in merciless to know if it works or not. It is pretty hard to make a build that can't make it through cruel unless you completely ignore defenses.

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fsg a écrit :

i did some independent calculations, and i found that the maximum dps you can squeeze out of a searing bond totem is about 6300 (209% inc burning from searing/passives/inc burning gem, 160% inc damage taken from vunerability + triple shock, and -60 fire res from EE and double curse)

if you combine this with firetraps i think you can melt shit pretty good

i do agree that searing bond CAN get to a sufficiently high dps with the above, but a lot of builds get to the same number without having to go triple shock + EE. i would also think that triple shock would be hard to obtain with EE on since you would have to hit the same monster 3 times with lightning damage, each with less damage due to EE's higher lightning res.

it probably is viable for early maps, but i'm waiting to be proven wrong on my opinion of its +70 maps viability. and would be happy to be proven wrong here :)

people talk about triple shock as something they had ever tried calculating, by the time you manage to get a target triple shocked you must had done over 50-60%+ of its max hp in lighnin dmg so guess what, this means that what you use to actually kill mobs is lighnin dmg not the other skill you are doing the math with.

if you want to shock a target, you need to do atleast 33.33% if its max hp in 1 single lighnin damage, if you want to triple shock a target you would need to do 100% of its max hp in 3 separate lighnin dmg.

if you have lets say thunderfists that increase your shock duration it would reduce the treshold by half meaning that you would only need to do 16.66% of the target max hp in lighnin damage on a single hit.

Taking into acount that for the math above you are using 100% crit chance spell or else you would need to do on average numbers above 100% of the target max hp in lighnin damage if you have anything less than 50% crit chance if you want to triple shock a target.


"ya triple shock that shiet and lets take into acount the extra dmg so my maths make the skill look more powerful"

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Shock

There is 1 build that I know of using searing bond that works, and I use the word "works" loosely.


It is a build using searing bond ,fire traps and a searing touch staff. You get a searing touch staff, all the burn dmg mods you can get, and fire traps. The rest goes to defense.

In the mid levels(act 2) this build is kinda fun and even levels as a reasonable pace. The problem is as you level up the build becomes more about pimping your fire traps than it is about pimping your searing bond, because bond dmg is too easily capped and mob resists increase as acts progress. By the time you get to maps, searing bond isn't your main skill anymore at all. So in this regard I do kind of disagree with GGG about it being "viable".


There is another problem with this build that is a mechanic problem and 1 I believe strongly to be the case, but haven't confirmed it in these forums. That is how this problem relates to magic find. It is my experience that Magic find and quantity modifiers are extremely wonky when it comes to burn damage. If I kill something with the initial hit of my firetrap, I get big loots. But, when the burn dmg kills it, I seem to get almost nothing.

I have asked about it, and haven't really gotten a clear response.

I just found this thread, I am running a searing bond build and am finding it to be pretty strong currently. I'm 64 right now with just Vaal left in act 2 merciless nemesis. I was able to solo the 3 bandits, Kole and Piety in Cruel but was in a party for Dominus. Obviously haven't reached maps yet but at least the low ones I expect to be comfortable. My setup is:

1) Soul Mantle for 3 totems
2) Searing Bond + Inc Burning Damage in +2 Fire Gems sceptre (can't afford Searing Touch)
3) Lightning Warp + Faster Casting + Elemental Proliferation + Reduced Mana (with spell totem from Soul Mantle)
4) Static Blows cluster for shock stacks from Warp hits.
5) The burning damage cluster and some of the new totem nodes including the +30% cast speed for totems down by duelist.
6) Flammabilitty when solo or Vulnerability in parties because it's less unsociable.
7) Quality Fire Trap with Inc Burn and Fire Pen for extra stackable burn damage and spot removal.

For crowds I just cast Searing Bond + 2 Warp Totems, the warp totems spread proliferated shock stacks and place the searing beams on the mobs. A quicksilver flask of adrenaline makes the totem cast speed go bezerk when it's needed! For champion packs or rares you can use 2 Searing + 1 Warp to focus the burning in more, or even a stack of 3 searing bond totems to burn at max speed when your target has too much HP to shock.

It's absolutely viable so far, the only issue is a bit of a set up time so if you are racing through whites in e.g. Fellshrine the recasting of totems slows you down a bit. Clearly I'm giving up 70% more burn damage without The Searing Touch but I haven't missed it and have defence and resists from a kite shield instead. If I was permanently planning to solo then I could add in Elemental Equilibrium, then the lightning warps trigger -50% fire resist and the burn damage takes advantage of that without any fire damage to trigger Equilibrium again. I like a mix of partying and solo so I haven't picked that yet.

Finally there is an opportunity to work utility totems into this as well, with a spare socket in soul mantle I have summon skeletons although I have yet to cast it. This with minion instability could give crowd control while giving the option to ignite to make use of the third stackable burn damage source. Perhaps a decoy totem as one of the three to avoid getting rushed could be good. In general you could hotkey up a few of these things so you can cope with a variety of situations.

Edit: I'm uploading a clip of this build running Merciless Caverns 1; just where I'm up to in the game right now. Searing Warp Scion